Article

From the horse’s mouth

TRENDNet

My Comments

TRENDNet have just launched a pair of unmanaged desktop switches that have 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet across ports and are offering them as a USD$280 8-port variant and a USD$510 16-port variant.

Most unmanaged desktop Ethernet switches that offer Power-Over-Ethernet power typically offer this for half of the ports that they have but this pair of switches has all ports with Power Over Ethernet. These units have 30 watts maximum per port for 802.11at power with the TPE-T80H 8-port variant having 125 watts total power and the TPE-T160H 16-port variant having 250 watts total power.

One major limitation with both these switches is that they are limited to 10/100Mbit/s throughput which may be OK for running most cameras, IP phones or 802.11n access points. It would be better to see TRENDNet offer them as an all-Gigabit version to cater for the newer 802.11ac access points or higher-throughput 802.11n access points, especially if adding this functionality has a slight per-port premium over a 10/100 setup.

Both of them can be desktop switches but also come with “rack ears” so they can be installed in a 19” standard equipment rack. This allows contractors to install the switches in an “integrated” manner rather than having them pile up on a desktop.

Here, I would position these switches for a baseline VoIP or IP surveillance setup or a system that has a mix of access points and entry-level VoIP or IP-surveillance equipment.